August marked the fourth consecutive month of negative job
growth. While dramatic job losses have ceased, hiring has not returned to
normal levels.

Sales also were down, resulting in a hit for earnings, too.

Rosemary
Elebash, state director of NFIB/Alabama, said small business owners here are as discouraged as their peers elsewhere.

"There's a
lot of uncertainty out there," she said in a prepared statement. "You're not going to invest in
new employees or a bigger space unless you're reasonably sure that investment
is going to pay off. Right now, though, small business owners don't know what
the healthcare law is going to do to them. They don't know what their taxes
will be. And they don't know what new regulations the government's going to
throw at them."

Some bright spots in the survey also were confusing, said NFIB Chief Economist
Bill Dunkelberg.

Job creation plans rose to a level not seen since before the recession, and expectations for sales also improved. Those trends don't gel with the current state of job creation and sales shown in the survey.

"The September
survey will hopefully straighten things but with Syria on the horizon, the
budget situation still up in the air, and Obamacare being rolled out, clarity
over our economic direction is not likely to be the outcome," Dunkelberg said in a statement.